Polly! - PRS SE Custom 24-08 in Eriza Verde

Meet Polly!

There are subtle guitars, there are tasteful guitars, and then there is Polly, who appears to have been dipped in radioactive apple juice, tastefully.

PRS SE Custom 24-08 • Eriza Verde • TCI “S” Pickups

We should probably address the colour first, because ignoring it would be like introducing Kermit the Frog and starting with his personality.

This magnificent shade is called Eriza Verde, and when PRS launched the SE Custom 24-08 for 2021, this was its new colour. Not green, not lime, not quite “visible from the International Space Station.”

Eriza Verde, and underneath it is a beautifully figured flame maple veneer that changes enormously as Polly moves through the light. PRS paired that with a maple top and mahogany back, leaving the natural mahogany visible around the sides and rear. The result is absolutely ridiculous, and we adore her.

But Polly isn’t just a pretty face.

The Custom 24 is the guitar at the heart of PRS, but the 24-08 takes that familiar recipe and does something considerably cleverer with the electronics.

Polly has two TCI “S” humbuckers, a three-way pickup selector and two little mini-toggle switches. Those switches independently split each humbucker.

Between the selector and independent coil switching, PRS gives the 24-08 eight different pickup combinations, hence that slightly cryptic name. That means Polly can go from big, warm humbucker sounds to much brighter single-coil territory without requiring a pedalboard the size of Belgium.

She’s extremely versatile, she’s just not remotely subtle about it.

Underneath all that green…

PRS gave the SE Custom 24-08 a mahogany body, maple top with flame maple veneer, set maple Wide Thin neck, rosewood fingerboard, 24 frets and a 25-inch scale.

Then, because apparently the top wasn’t decorative enough already, they filled the fretboard with those unmistakable PRS bird inlays.

The Wide Thin neck is exactly what its name suggests. Slim and quick without feeling insubstantial, with the 24-fret layout and generous double cutaways giving you excellent access right up the board.

At the other end sits PRS’s patented molded tremolo and PRS-designed tuners, and yes… we have the tremolo arm.

In fact, Polly arrived with a lovely little bag of her original bits and pieces, including her trem arm and adjustment tools. We have resisted the urge to call it her handbag, until now.

The Stray Chord treatment:

Polly didn’t arrive needing major surgery. What she needed was the sort of careful attention that takes a very good used guitar and makes it feel properly lovely again.

She was stripped down, thoroughly cleaned and inspected, her hardware and electronics checked, fingerboard attended to, frets cleaned and polished and everything carefully put back together.

She has then been restrung and given a complete professional setup, with her action, relief, intonation and pickup heights dialled in so she’s ready for her next person, and that Eriza Verde top? It has been carefully cleaned and polished until the flame started doing THAT again.

*gestures vaguely at photographs *

Because LOOK AT HER.

Polly is a used guitar, so there are naturally signs that she has had a life before us rather than spending several years sealed inside a vault. Any marks worth knowing about are shown honestly in her photographs.

Overall, though, she presents beautifully.

The failed foster.

We should probably confess something. Polly has been hanging around The Stray Chord for rather longer than was strictly necessary.

Not because she needed months of rehabilitation, and not because we couldn’t identify her.

Not because anything was wrong with her, either, Sarah just really likes her.

There was a brief period where Polly’s prospects of ever appearing on Stray Of The Day were becoming increasingly questionable. Apparently there’s a technical term for this - a failed foster.

Unfortunately for Sarah, The Stray Chord cannot function as a guitar rescue if every particularly pretty green guitar mysteriously becomes a permanent resident, we checked.

So after an entirely unreasonable amount of procrastination… Polly is officially up for adoption.

Please take her before ‘somebody’ changes their mind.

So what are you adopting?

A PRS SE Custom 24-08 in frankly outrageous Eriza Verde.

A flame maple veneered maple top over a mahogany body.

A set Wide Thin maple neck with rosewood fingerboard and 24 frets.

Those beautiful PRS bird inlays.

Two TCI “S” humbuckers with independent coil splitting and eight available pickup combinations.

PRS patented tremolo.

Her tremolo arm and accompanying original accessories.

A complete Stray Chord workshop inspection, clean, fret treatment and professional setup.

The SE Custom 24-08 is one of those guitars that makes an awful lot of sense once you actually play one.

It’s comfortable, it’s beautifully made, it’s enormously versatile, and in Eriza Verde, it has precisely zero interest in quietly blending into the background.

Which, frankly, we respect.

Polly has been cleaned, polished, set up.

Admired.

Photographed.

Admired again.

Almost accidentally adopted by the person who was supposed to be rehoming her, and finally wrestled onto the adoption list.

Polly is ready for her next home… Probably.

Sarah would like it formally recorded that this decision was made under protest.

THE STRAY CHORD
RESCUE • RESTORE • REHOME